Two Wheels. One Dark Lord.

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Cyclist Down

We’re going to start putting together all the Cyclist Down stories into one weekly update. I’d prefer that I didn’t get enough emails every week to do it that often. But, if a review of past history is any indication of what to expect in future, well, we’re going to have a lot to share.

Many of these are a few weeks, even a few months old. I had banked ’em all in my inbox while I was studying for the bar exam this summer (worst summer ever, btw). Now that I’ve got more free time I will try to get each and every one up on Drunkcyclist.

From: Scott
Just an update on an earlier message I sent. They posted the accident report and the driver of the car got out talking on her cellphone looked at Jan laying there, then got back in her car and ran over her again trying to leave the seen. Witness’s force her from her car.

From: HaCobo
A great person in the Albuquerque cycling community was hit and killed by a car. I knew Matt for the last 6 years. We attended many poker rides (drinking and biking and poker all in a city night ride) together. He loved bikes and skis. He will be truly missed.

Eugene Henry Dennis, a former Colerain High School track star who went on to win a U.S. National Championship 5K title in 2003, died Sept. 19 after being hit by an alleged drunk driver in Taycheedah, Wis.

About big jonny

The man, the legend. The guy who started it all back in the Year of Our Lord Beer, 2000, with a couple of pages worth of idiotic ranting hardcoded on some random porn site that would host anything you uploaded, a book called HTML for Dummies (which was completely appropriate), a bad attitude (which hasn’t much changed), and a Dell desktop running Win95 with 64 mgs of ram and a six gig hard drive. Those were the days. Then he went to law school. Go figure.
Flagstaff, Arizona, USA

11 thoughts on “Cyclist Down”

I don’t know if I’m unique in doing this, probably not, but whenever I read the cyclist down articles I end up being more focused on the comments left afterwards. These comment strings are always populated by the same characters. The views expressed are often a clue to as to how one person can be so uncaring towards another just because there is some objectifying angle that one person feels is justification for a reckless act.
There’s lots of clueless fucks out there, unfortunately some of them have been “elected” to fill some important role in society. I was riding through Mississippi in May of this year, got pulled over by the cops on May 25th, they had got a call from someone that told them I almost got hit by a car and they were stopping me to tell me that I had to get off “their highway”? No explanation, no reason, no suggestion as to how I would get from where I was to where I needed to go without “their highway” but it just reiterated the point that I was at best, irrelevant, and at worst a worthless obstruction and unnecessary safety risk for the drivers in Mississippi.
Every time I heard a car coming up behind me while knowing that I was over as far as I could be and my fate was all up in the hands of this anonymous driver I imagined myself getting hit. I tried to visualize the speed of the impact and being thrown into the ditch with such force that I probably wouldn’t be able to process it. I then thought about how no one would care to stop, or they would be more concerned about “getting away” and avoiding responsibility for their actions than they would be for checking on the guy they just hit. I thought about how no one would call for help, no charges would be filed, or how if someone did call for help and I did not die and did go to a hospital how I have no health insurance and would just die in lots of pain and my next of kin would get the bill.
In all those hundreds of miles alone on the bike I spent a lot of time thinking about humans being cruel to each other by not caring, and especially about not caring about not caring for each other. I guess I’d like to say thanks to all those thousands of drivers across Al, MS, AR, and OK who for whatever reason, didn’t hit me. Not all riders are so fortunate. If there’s anything I like about riding a bike one of the biggest things is how it continually reminds me to look out for other people’s safety. I first learned this as a motorcyclist riding on highways, once you realize your massive vulnerability and relative weakness to others it it makes you constantly hyper-aware, and if your a motorcyclist who also drives a car you think to yourself, “I really gotta be careful when I drive that I don’t squish somebody on a bike.”
Wow, I didn’t intend to write such a long comment, but I guess this really hits close to home for me since I was in a position this summer where I could have been as unfortunate as the women from MS, or worse. I just don’t understand how some people can be so uncaring for the safety of others. To some drivers, a cyclist is just meat that’s in my way, fuck them.

…re: the san diego incident…i got first hand exposure to that one being as my ex-canuck cousin in so-cal rides that path with his two grown sons on a regular basis…

…considering the layout, he said he felt totally safe there until this situation happened…up an embankment & then through a chainlink fence with still enough velocity to kill a cyclist, a father of two little ones, no less…

…as cyclists, we get to have a lotta fun on this site but every now & then we get brought down hard…that’s not a bad thing…

…it’s just a reminder of what’s really going on out there on a daily basis…

50,000 people a week die in this Country. Nothing is going to change the fact that accidents and worse will happen on the roads. I’m done with “Cyclist Down”, not because I don’t think it is important but simply it doesn’t change anything for me except make me worry more.

Things I know:
– Cyclists will be hit and killed or maimed.
– The vast majority of society doesn’t care and even assigns some blame to cyclists.
– For the most part, drivers face almost no repercussions and certainly will not spend time in jail or prison being further punished by ‘Bubba’.

In the KGTV10 San Diego video a co-worker of mine can be scene wearing a white jersey, he was returning home after a ride out to the coast. He did not witness the accident but was one of the first responders. Something he said he wishes he would never have to do again